Saskatoon fastest growing city in Canada

By Shannon Proudfoot, Postmedia NewsJuly 20, 2011

OTTAWA — Western Canada is home to an increasingly youthful and fast-growing population, while the eastern provinces are older and growing more slowly, according to new demographic analysis from Statistics Canada.

Saskatoon is Canada's fastest-growing city, with a population growth rate of 27.7 per 1,000 people between July 1, 2009, and June 30, 2010. That added 7,200 residents to the city, for a total population of 265,300, the agency said Wednesday.

Saskatoon is followed by Vancouver, growing at a rate of 22.3 per 1,000, and Regina, which swelled by 22.3 per 1,000 over that same one-year period.

"There are some differences happening in the western provinces compared to the eastern provinces, and what's happening in Saskatchewan is quite interesting," says Anne Milan, a senior analyst with Statistics Canada's demography division and co-author of the report released Wednesday.

International migration was the driving force behind Saskatchewan's booming population, the agency says, with nearly half the population growth fuelled by that factor. Saskatoon alone gained 3,300 people through net international migration in that year, outstripping the international draw of larger cities such as Hamilton, Ont. and Quebec City.

In contrast, cities including Halifax, Montreal, Kelowna, B.C., Victoria and St. John's had growth rates below the national average. Only two cities — Windsor, Ont. and Sudbury, Ont. — registered negative population growth, driven in both cases by losing residents to other Canadian cities.

"In some ways, it's the opposite story (in Eastern Canada), where there's generally lower fertility, they don't receive a large share of immigrants and net interprovincial migration is frequently negative," Milan says.

Amid an aging Canadian population, Saskatoon is also the youngest city in the country, with a median age of 35.4 years, compared to the national median of 39.7.

Many of Canada's other youngest cities are concentrated in the west, with Saskatoon followed by Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, Toronto and Winnipeg. Those cities are also aging more slowly, fuelled by far more births than deaths and net gains in migration from other countries, provinces and cities.

In contrast, Saguenay, Que., and Trois-Rivieres, Que., are the oldest cities in Canada, with median ages of 45.0 years, while Quebec City, St. John's, Kelowna, Victoria and St. Catharines-Niagara, Ont., are also older than average.

"Everything kind of interrelates," says Milan. "Population growth and the components of interprovincial migration and immigration and fertility — they all have an impact not only on population growth but the age structure."

Saskatchewan is also a front-runner in terms of the total fertility rate, or the number of children a hypothetical woman would have if she followed current age-specific fertility rates. Saskatchewan's total fertility rate was 2.05 in 2008, second only to Nunavut at 2.98 and the Northwest Territories at 2.08, and very close to the 2.1 replacement figure considered necessary to maintain current population levels without immigration.

In contrast, Ontario's fertility rate is 1.58, Nova Scotia's is 1.54 and Quebec's is 1.74.

But while longer life expectancies, aging baby boomers and fewer births have propelled population aging in recent decades, newly analyzed fertility data show a five-year trend toward more babies overall.

There were 377,900 babies born in Canada in 2008, up from 354,600 in 2006 and the highest recorded number since 1995, though the number still pales in comparison to the 479,300 bundles of Canadian joy welcomed in 1959 at the peak of the baby boom.

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